This year is the
Jewish year 5768 (I’m writing late 2007). The Jewish calendar reckons from the
creation of Adam, and according to it there are yet 232 years to the close of
the sixth millennium. In Usher’s chronology, however, Adam was created in 4004
BCE, which would mean that the six thousand years ended in the autumn of 1997.
If Usher were right then the prediction has failed that Messiah returns
before the end of the sixth millennium (just as Adam and Eve were enthroned
over the creation before the end of the sixth day). But if the Jewish
reckoning is correct, then the Messiah may very well not come in this or the
next several generations.

Though
meticulous and informed by rabbinical and New Testament considerations, Usher’s
chronology needs updated in light of subsequent findings. Rabbinical sources
predict that the first messiah should have come at the beginning of the 5th
millennium, which according to the Jewish reckoning didn’t begin until 239 CE.
Therefore Jesus was a couple centuries too early to have been the messiah, and
therefore the Jewish reckoning too may need adjusted.

What I propose
here is an alternative model that is sensitive to all information available
today (historical, rabbinical, archaeological) and that also looks for pattern
and beauty. Biblical studies are so jaded from the reigning materialism that to
suggest that beauty be used as a guide to truth sounds ridiculous. Still, if
beauty is a principle guide to truth in physics, why not in biblical
interpretation? Consider this from David Gelernter (1997):

The sense of
beauty is a tuning fork in the brain that hums when we stumble on
something beautiful. We enjoy the resonant hum and seek it out. And when
we return numb and weary from a round of shoveling the grim gray snow of
life, beauty is the hearth, beauty’s the fire, beauty’s the cup of
coffee (the fragrance, the saucer’s clink, the curl of cream) that makes
the whole business seem almost worthwhile. Strangely enough, beauty is
also a truth-and-rightness meter, and science and technology could not
exist without it. Its tuning-fork hum guides scientists toward truth and
technologists toward stronger and more useful machines. It leads the way
forward. There is
the ever-present danger when you discuss beauty in science, mathematics,
and technology that readers will assume the word is being used
metaphorically. Could a mathematical proof, scientific theory, or piece
of software be beautiful in the real, literal way that a painting or
symphony or rose can be beautiful? Yes.

The chronology
of the Bible is pretty straightforward except for three places. It is not clear
in what year of the life of his father Terah that Abraham was born; it is not
clear where to begin the 430 years given in Exodus 12:40-41; and thirdly the
chronology of the kings of Judah and Israel is complex and controversial. I
start with three assumptions:

üAbraham departed Harran
(when he was 75 – Genesis 12:4) at the death of his father;

üThe 430 years in Exodus
12:40-41 began with the birth of Isaac;

üThe chronology of the
kings of Israel and Judah as worked out by Edwin Thiele (1951) and Gershon Galil
(1996) are basically correct (within a very few years at least).

Then
came he [Abraham] out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in
Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into
this land, wherein ye now dwell.
[2]

And according to
this reckoning we find that the Covenant of Circumcision came in the 43rd
jubilee of Adam:

———————— 43 jubilee cycles ————————

— 1656 years —

— 427 years —

— 24 years —

—— 1 year ——

1

Adam created

1656

Flood

Genesis 5:1-32

2083

Death of Terah

Abraham departs Harran

Genesis 11:10-32

2107

Passover

Covenant of Circumcision

Genesis 17:1-27

2108

Passover

Isaac born

Genesis 21:5

The second
assumption—that the 430 years begin with the birth of Isaac—is based on
Galatians 3:16-17:

Now to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds,
as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I
say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in
Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot
disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.

Abraham’s
singular seed, of course, was Isaac, which Paul is here presenting as a type of
Messiah or second Adam. Exodus is not particularly clear as to when to begin the
430 years, except that the Passover is the exact anniversary of some event 430
years before (Ex 12:41):

וַיְהִי

And it
came to pass

מִקֵּץ שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה

At the
end of the four hundred and thirty years,

וַיְהִי בְּעֶצֶם
הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה

even the
selfsame day it came to pass,

יָצְאוּ כָּל־צִבְאוֹת
יהוה

That all
the hosts of the LORD went out

מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם׃

From the
land of Egypt.

The one event in
Genesis that is emphasized as occurring at a set time is the birth of Isaac. It
was to occur ‘according to the time of life’ (Gen 18:10):

וַיֹּאמֶר

And he
[God] said,

שׁוֹב אָשׁוּב אֵלֶיךָ

I will
certainly return unto thee

כָּעֵת חַיָּה

according to the time of life;

וְהִנֵּה־בֵן
לְשָׂרָה
אִשְׁתֶּךָ

and, lo,
Sarah thy wife shall have a son.

And it was
prophesied to occur ‘at the time appointed’ (Gen 18:14):

הֲיִפָּלֵא מֵיהוה דָּבָר

Is any
thing too hard for the LORD?

לַמּוֹעֵד אָשׁוּב אֵלֶיךָ

At the
time appointed I will return unto thee,

כָּעֵת
חַיָּה וּלְשָׂרָה בֵן׃

according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.

And when the
prophecy was fulfilled the precision of the time is emphasized (Gen 21:2):

וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד שָׂרָה לְאַבְרָהָם

For
Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham

בֵּן לִזְקֻנָיו

a son in
his old age,

לַמּוֹעֵד

at the
set time

אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר
אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִים׃

of which
God had spoken to him.

The rabbinical
approach begins the 430 years at the Covenant between the Parts (Gen 15:7-21).[3]
Nevertheless it is also understood that Isaac was born on Passover, as in Rashi
to Gen 18:10—

כָּעֵת חַיָּה

“according to the time of life”.

כָּעֵת הַזֹּאת לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה

According to this time next year,

וּפֶסַח הָיָה

and
it was Passover,

וּלְפֶסַח הַבָּא נוֹלַד יִצְחָק

and
at the following Passover Isaac was born

מִדְּלֹא קָרִינָן כְּעֵת אֶלָּא כָּעֵת

because it is not written at a time but at the time:

כָּעֵת חַיָּה.

“according to the time of life”.

Beginning the
430 years at the miraculous birth of Isaac (a
type of the 2nd Adam as indicated in Gal 3:16-17)
provides a pattern where 43 jubilee (49 year) cycles is followed by 43 decades.[4]

—————— 43 jubilee cycles ——————

– 430 years –

– 1656 years –

– 427 years –

— 24 years —

— 1 year —

1

Adam

created

1656

Flood

Gen 5:1-32

2083

Death of Terah

Abraham departs Harran

Gen 11:10-32

2107

Passover

Covenant of Circumcision

Gen 17:1-27

2108

Passover

Isaac born

Gen 21:5

2538

Passover

Exodus from Egypt

Ex 12:40-41

The number 43
seems to separate times of exile and redemption (and vice versa), as in the
following:

üThe 1290 days in Daniel
12:11 equal 43 prophetic months

üThe 2nd
temple was destroyed 43 years after the beginning of Messiah’s ministry

üMessiah ascended to
heaven 43 days after his death

We now observe
another pattern of jubilee cycles—this one terminating in the Exodus.

The idea that
biblical chronology should be organized within 49 year cycles is old, dating at
least to the 2nd century BCE Book of Jubilees. Thus where
Genesis has (Gen 5:5), “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and
thirty years: and he died”, Jubilees 4:29[6]
has,

And at the close of the
nineteenth jubilee, in the seventh week in the sixth year thereof, Adam
died, and all his sons buried him in the land of his creation, and he
was the first to be buried in the earth.

In our quest for
pattern we found that Isaac, the messianic type, was miraculously conceived in
the 43rd jubilee of Adam. Now we see jubilee patterns beginning with
Enosh who receives special mention in Genesis 4:26—

And it came to pass in the
four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come
out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over
Israel, in the month Zif [זִו],
which is the second month, that he began to build the house of
the LORD.

The temple was
seven years in building (1Kings 6:37-38):

In the fourth year was the
foundation of the house of the LORD laid, in the month Zif [זִו]:
And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul [בּוּל],
which is the eighth month, was the house finished throughout all
the parts thereof, and according to all the fashion of it. So was he
seven years in building it.

When was the
temple dedicated? That it was at least a year later we learn from 1Kings
8:2—“And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the
feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.” Bullinger
(1921) suggests it took three years “at least for the furnishing and
ending of all the work (1 Kings 7:13-51)”:

For in 1
Kings 8:2 it was dedicated in the seventh month, though it
was finished in the eighth month. Therefore it could not have
been the same year; and it may well have required three years for the
completion of all the interior work described in 1 Kings 7:13-51.

And if we perceive beauty as a
reliable guide to the truth, we will notice with Bullinger that 70 weeks (שְׁמִטָּה)
separates the Dedication from the Exodus:

Thirty jubilees bring us from the Exodus to the opening of
Christ’s ministry, when, opening Isaiah 61:2, he proclaimed ‘the
acceptable year of the Lord’ in a seven-fold prophecy (see Luke
4:18-21).

If the Exodus
occurred in the year 2538 of Adam (1656 + 427 + 25 + 430), then (as we saw
above) a search for pattern shows the Exodus to have occurred in the 18th
jubilee of the Flood, the 20th jubilee of the birth of Shem, and the
47th jubilee of the birth of Enosh. These numbers aren’t very
interesting (the Exodus is bound to be a jubilee of a couple of datable events
in Genesis), but when we consider Bullinger’s intuition that Messiah’s ministry
began in the 30th jubilee of the Exodus, then there emerges an
interesting pattern of jubilees beginning with Enosh that point to the beginning
of Jesus’ ministry:

——————————————77 jubilee cycles—————————————

———————————50 jubilee cycles———————————

—————————48 jubilee cycles—————————

——————40 jubilee cycles——————

————30 jubilee cycles————

— 20 jubilee cycles —

-10 cycles-

235

Enosh

born

1558

Shem

Born

1656

Flood

2048

Abram 40 years old

2538

Exodus

3028

Temple dedicated

3518 Artaxerxes I begins reign

4008

Messiah begins ministry

Thus just as 77
generations separate the New Testament Messiah from God, so also there are 77
jubilee cycles from Enosh to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

And just as Noah blessed Shem with
(Gen 9:27), “… and he [God] shall dwell in the tents of Shem”, and just as God
said (Lev 25:10), “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty
throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a
jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall
return every man unto his family”, so also God sent his son to dwell in the
tents of Shem in the 50th jubilee of Shem.

And just as
(Luke 3:23) “… Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age …” at the
beginning of his ministry, so also this was in the 30th jubilee of
Israel at Sinai.

Also of interest
is the observation that if Jesus began his ministry in 4008, then this was 100
metonic (19 year) cycles after the miraculous birth of Isaac in 2108. Isaac is
a primary type of messiah (Gal 3:16) and so it is interesting that Jesus would
follow him in this manner. Another way to look at it is to observe that 30
jubilee cycles are less than 100 metonic cycles by precisely 430 years.

—————————— 100 metonic cycles ——————————

———— 430 years ————

——— 30 jubilee cycles ———

2108

Birth of Isaac

2538

Exodus

4008

Messiah begins ministry

If the facts
ever confirm the chronology suggested above, then this would provide evidence
that Jesus was indeed the prophesied Messiah.

The Millennial Week

The above
chronology (as opposed to the traditional Jewish one that puts us in the year
5768) also has Jesus in range of Elijah’s prophecy as preserved in the Talmud
(Sanhedrin 97b; Abodah Zarah 9a):

תָּנָא דְּבֵי אֵלִיָּהוּ

The
words of Elijah were studied:

שֵׁשֶׁת אֲלפִים שָׁנָה הֲוֵי עָלְמָא

The
world endures six thousand years—

שְׁנֵי אֲלָפִים תּוֹהוּ

Tohu
two thousand,

שְׁנֵי אֲלָפִים תּוֹרָה

Torah
two thousand,

שְׁנֵי אֲלָפִים יְמוֹת הַמָּשִׁיחַ

the days
of the messiah two thousand.

Jewish and
Christian exegetes long saw support for the millennial interpretation in Psalms
90:4, as the Ramban in his commentary on Genesis 2:3:

וְדַע

And know

כִּי נִכְלָל עוֹד בְּמִלַּת לַעֲשׂוֹת

that
included also in the expression “to make” [Gen 2:3]

כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת יְמֵי בְּרֵאשִׁית

are the
six days of Genesis.

הֵם כָּל יְמוֹת עוֹלָם

They are
all the days of the world,

כִּי קִיּוּמוֹ יִהְיֶה שֵׁשֶׁת אֲלָפִים שָׁנָה

because
its development will be six thousand years,

שֶׁלְּכָ אָמְרוּ

as they
said [Sanhedrin 97a; Genesis Rabbah 19:8],

יוֹמוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּ הוּא

the day
of the Holy One Blessed be He

אֶלֶף שָׁנִים

is a
thousand years [Psalms 90:4].

Psalm 90
commences the Fourth Book of Psalms and is titled, “A
Prayer of Moses the man of God [תְּפִלָּה
לְמֹשֶׁה אִישׁ־הָאֱלֹהִים].”
It is not unreasonable that it should be read in light of Genesis 1.

גתָּשֵׁב
אֱנוֹשׁ עַד־דַּכָּא

3 Thou turnest man to
destruction;

וַתֹּאמֶר

and sayest,

שׁוּבוּ בְנֵי־אָדָם׃

Return,
ye children of men.

דכִּי
אֶלֶף שָׁנִים בְּעֵינֶי

4 For a thousand years in thy
sight

כְּיוֹם אֶתְמוֹל כִּי
יַעֲבֹר

are but
as yesterday when it is past,

וְאַשְׁמוּרָה בַלָּיְלָה׃

and as a watch in the
night.

The connection to the days in
Genesis is at least as early as the 2nd century BCE in the
Book of Jubilees 4:30 (as in Charles 1923):

And he [Adam] lacked seventy
years of one thousand years [Gen 5:5]; for one thousand years are as one
day in the testimony of the heavens [Ps 90:4] and therefore was it
written concerning the tree of knowledge [Gen 2:17]: “On the day that ye
eat thereof ye will die.” For this reason he did not complete the years
of this day; for he died during it.

Six Thousand Years of History

First Millennium

1

130

235

687

930

987

Adam’s
creation begins year one

Seth born

Enosh
born

Methuselah born

Adam dies

Enoch
taken

Second Millennium

1000

1056

1536

1656

1757

1948

Methuselah is 313 years old

Noah born

God
allots 120 years (Genesis 6:3)

Flood

Peleg
born

Haran
born

Third Millennium

2006

2008

2083

2108

2538

2982

Noah dies

Abraham
born

Terah
dies, Abraham departs Haran

Birth of
Isaac

Exodus

David
reigns over all Israel & Judah

Fourth Millennium

3015

3018

3049

3261

3396

3978

David
dies, Solomon ascends throne

Solomon
begins temple

Rehoboam
reigns, kingdom divided

Assyria
conquers Samaria

Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem

Jesus
born

Fifth Millennium

4008

4011

4051

4302

4457

4618

4984

Jesus
began ministry

Jesus’
resurrection

Temple
destroyed

Council
of Nicea

Fall of
Rome

Muslims
conquer Jerusalem

Leifr Eiríksson
departs Greenland

Sixth Millennium

5047

5048

5435

5436

5473

5770

5878

5919

5929

5948

Battle of
Hastings

Rashi
founds Yeshiva

Fall of
Constantinople

Gutenberg
Bible

Expulsion
from Spain, Columbus departs

USA
founded; Bastille stormed

Herzl
founds World Zionist Organization

Holocaust
began

Israeli
state founded

Six Day
War

When Elijah
says, “Tohu two thousand [שְׁנֵי
אֲלָפִים תּוֹהוּ],” we compare
the land’s initial state (Gen 1:2), “and the land was tohu [וְהָאָרֶץ
הָיְתָה תֹהוּ],” with the
beginning of the 3rd day where it says (Gen 1:9), “… and let the dry land
appear … and God saw that it was good [וְתֵרָאֶה
הַיַּבָּשָׁה ... וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב]”.

From the
millennial perspective it is observed that if tohu represents lawlessness
in the land of Israel (Jer 4:23), “I saw the land and behold tohu [רָאִיתִי
אֶת־הָאָרֶץ
וְהִנֵּה־תֹהוּ],”
then the law entered the land with Abraham at the beginning of the 3nd
millennium which is also the millennium of the Exodus and Covenant.

When it says, “Torah two
thousand [שְׁנֵי
אֲלָפִים תּוֹרָה],” we notice
that it is the 3rd day when God says (Gen 1:11), “Let the land bring
forth … fruit trees bearing fruit after its kind [תַּדְשֵׁא
הָאָרֶץ
... עֵץ פְּרִי עֹשֶׂה פְּרִי לְמִינוֹ],”
and we compare (Gen 2:9), “and the Eternal God made to grow from the ground …
the tree of life in the midst of the garden [וַיַּצְמַח
ה׳ אֱלֹהִים מִן־הָאֲדָמָה
... עֵץ הַחַיִּים בְּתוֹךְ הַגָּן].”
Symbolically the tree of life is the Torah or wisdom of God (Prov 3:18):
“She [חָכְמָה]
is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her …” And when the word is
internalized and lived (Prov 11:30), “The fruit of the righteous is a
tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise [חָכָם].”

The Gospels extend this period of
Torah to its own age (Luke 16:16) “The law and the prophets were until
John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth
into it.”

But how do we get the next two
days—the 5th and 6th—to equal “the days of the messiah two
thousand [years]”? Well, the Messiah is Adam (as also in Romans 5:14), and if
Adam is to name the creatures (Gen 2:18-20) this accords with the 5th
and 6th days wherein God brought them forth (Gen 1:20-25). Therefore
Adam is formed first at the beginning of the 5th day (Gen 2:7), which
is why Paul speaks of Adam/Messiah (Col 1:15), “Who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature”.

The two thousand years of Messiah
(messiah son of Ephraim in midrashic reckoning) conclude when as it says (Gen
1:27), “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them.”

Allegorically the waters are the
nations (Isaiah 2:2; 17:12-13; Rev 17:15), and thus it’s on the 5th
day that God said (Gen 1:20), “Let the waters bring forth …” The 5th
and 6th millennia are the times of the waters/nations and the time of
Israel’s exile (Luke 21:24): “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and
shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down
of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

It’s also the time of Ephraim’s
birthright (Gen 48:19): “… and his seed shall be the fullness of the nations [וְזַרְעוֹ
יִהְיֶה מְלֹא־הַגּוֹיִם]”—which
is what Paul is referring to when he says (Rom 11:25) “… that blindness in part
is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles [τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν] be come in.”
And there is also the allusion in Jeremiah 31 (Jer 31:9), “… for I am a father
to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn [כִּי־הָיִיתִי
לְיִשְׂרָאֵל לְאָב וְאֶפְרַיִם בְּכֹרִי הוּא].”

Psalms 80 concerns Joseph (“Give ear,
O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock …”) and connects
Genesis 48 where Israel conveyed the birthright with his right hand on Ephraim’s
head:

The law and the prophets were until
John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man
presseth into it.

Luke 16:16

6000

… and they lived and reigned with Christ a
thousand years.

Rev 20:

7000

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand
before God …

Rev 20:12

God tells Daniel that at before “the
time of the end”—understood as the close of God’s cosmic six day workweek—that
“knowledge shall be increased” (Dan 12:4). The timing is made specific in the
Zohar (Vayera
32:445),

וּבְשִׁית מְאָה שְׁנִין לִשְׁתִיתָאָָה

And in the six hundredth
year of the sixth millennium

יִתְפַּתְּחוּן תַּרְעֵי דְחָכְמְתָא לְעֵילָא

there will be opened the
gates of the wisdom of above

וּמַבּוּעֵי דְחָכְמְתָא לְתַתָּא

and the fountains of the
wisdom below.

וְיִתְתַּקַּן עַלְמָא

And the world will be
prepared

לְאָעֳלָא בִּשְׁבִיעָאָה

to go up into the seventh
millennium

כְּבַד נָשׁ דְּמִתְתַּקַּן בְּיוֹמָא שְׁתִיתָאָה

just as a man who
prepares himself on the sixth day

מֵכִי עָרַב שִׁמְשָׁא לַאֲעָלָא בְּשַׁבָּתָא

as the sun goes down to
go up into the Sabbath.

אוֹף הָכֵי נָמֵי וְסִימָנֵי

And your sign for this is
(Genesis 7:11),

בִּשְׁנַת שֵׁשׁ מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה לְחַיֵּי נֹחַ וְגוֹ׳

“In the six hundredth
year of Noah’s life, etc.

נִבְקְעוּ כָּל מַעְיְנֹת
תְּהוֹם רַבָּה

all the fountains of the
great deep broken up,

[וַאֲרֻבֹּת
הַשָּׁמַיִם, נִפְתָּחוּ׃]

[and the windows of
heaven were opened.]"

Thus according to the traditional
Protestant understanding of chronology and that suggested in this paper,
knowledge should have begun to increase somewhere around 1600. Nicolaus Copernicus lived 1473 to
1543, Galileo Galilei from 1564 to1642, Isaac Newton from 1643 to 1727, etc.
If “all the fountains of the great deep broken up” signify the founding of
modern science, “and the windows of heaven were opened” should have to do with
spiritual knowledge.

Has there also been an advance in
spiritual understanding since about 1600?

Charles, Robert
Henry. 1923. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Galil, Gershon. 1996. The
Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah.
Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Middle East, Vol. 9. Brill
Academic Publishers.

Gelernter, David. 1997. Truth, Beauty, and the Virtual Machine.
Discover Magazine (Science, Technology, and The
Future). September 1. Available on line at
http://discovermagazine.com/1997/sep/truthbeautyandth1217.

Thiele, Edwin R. 1951. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, A
Reconstruction of the Chronology of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
University of Chicago Press. Later reprinted by Zondervan Publishing House,
1984.

Finegan, Jack
1998. The Handbook of Biblical Chronology: Principles of Time Reckoning in
the Ancient World and Problems of Chronology in the Bible. Revised
edition. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers.

Lorenzini,
Massimiliano. Undated. Evidence for the Early Date of the Exodus. Article
available on line at http://www.angelfire.com/nm/massimolorenzini/exodus.html.

Rohl, David.
1996.
Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest. New York: Crown Publishers. First British edition:
A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History,
Arrow Books Ltd.,
1995.

Scherman,
Nosson. 1998. The Stone Edition of the Chumash: The Torah, Haftaros, and
Five Megillos With a Commentary Anthologized from the Rabbinic Writings.
Brooklyn, New York: ArtScroll Mesorah Series.

Zee, A. 1999.
Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics. Princeton
University Press.

[1]Here I take Acts 7:4, not as completely
decisive, but as a tradition that directs the chronology along the more
beautiful path. The account in verse
16, for example, is confused. Evidently
it refers to Joseph’s burial (Gen 50:25; Ex 13:19; Josh 24:32), not
Jacob’s burial in the cave in the field of Machpelah that Abraham had
bought (Gen 23; 49:29-32; 50:12-13). It was Jacob who bought the piece
of ground where Joseph was buried (Gen 33:18-19), “And Jacob … bought a
parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the
children of Hamor, Shechem’s father [חֲמוֹר
אֲבִי שְׁכֶם], for an hundred pieces of
money.”

[2] Genesis says simply (Gen
11:26), “And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and
Haran”, and then (verse 32), “And the days of Terah were two hundred and
five years: and Terah died in Haran.” But in chapter 12 verse 1 it
says, “… and Abram was seventy and five years old when he
departed out of Haran.” Up to this point Genesis has been precise,
telling us in exactly what year of each father the next son was born.
Here, however, it is not clear that Abraham was the firstborn. Acts 7:4
would have Abraham born when Terah was 130 (205 minus 75) years old.

[3]The Rabbinic tradition, according
to the Stone Chumash (Scherman 1998) at Genesis 15:7-21, puts the
Covenant between the Parts when Abraham was 70 (five years before he
left Harran!), and begins the count to the Exodus then (Ex 12:40): “The Covenant between the Parts (Genesis
15:7-21) took place 430 years before the Exodus”.

[4] Here I begin the 430
years in 2108 with Isaac’s birth and not in 2107 with the Covenant of
Circumcision—this based on the patterns that we will see emerge.

[5] The Rambam says that
Abraham was 40 when he recognized his Creator (הלכות
עבודה זרה פרק א):

[9] Any literal reading of
Scripture puts the date of the Exodus in the mid 2nd
millennium BCE, but this dating has been rejected by almost all modern
scholars who, although denying that the Exodus ever happened,
nevertheless would have it more than three centuries later. For an
exposition of the traditional, older date, see Jack (1925), and for an
on line survey see “Evidence for the Early Date of the Exodus” at
http://www.angelfire.com/nm/massimolorenzini/exodus.html. David Rohl
(1996) offers an interesting and controversial reconstruction of
Egyptian history amenable to the biblical text.

[10] Here, for what it’s
worth, the completion of the Temple (3025) follows the Covenant of
Circumcision (2107) by six times 153 years, which is the number of fish
in John 21:11, and which Bullinger (1921) notes is the gematria
of בני
האלהים ‘the sons of God’.

[11] This cannot differ much
from any chronology that takes the biblical text seriously. Edwin Thiele
(1951) and Gershon Galil (1996) both begin Rehoboam’s reign in 931
BCE
(note that Solomon reigned 40 years - 1Kings 11:42; 2Chron 9:30).
Rehoboam’s reign would have to have begun about 928 to fit Bullinger’s
30 jubilees hypothesis. When our calculations differ no more than three
years, beauty as a guide to truth suggests Bullinger may eventually be
proven right.

[12] The genealogy in Luke
may be corrupted. Cainan (number 14) is not found in the Masoretic text
(Gen 11 & 1Chron 1 - though it is there in the Septuagint), and
Salathiel and Zorobabel (numbers 56-57) are also found in Matthew’s
genealogy as descendants of Solomon. The Bezae for Luke traces the
genealogy through Solomon the same as in Matthew.